If anything, the Pirate Party is more akin to the Communist Party, in that it was born out of an emerging economic and social era driven by a new technology, and that it advocates for people's rights in, and postulates new rules of engagement for, how to live in this new era of new advances. If the communists were beholden to industrialization, then the Pirates are beholden to the Internet.

"The ancient dream of compiling all human knowledge and culture and to store it for the present and future is within close grasp," the Pirate manifesto posits. "The digital revolution brings humanity the opportunity of advancing democracy" and "enables completely new and previously unthinkable solutions for the distribution of power within a state."

"The aim," it calls, "is to distribute power as broadly as possible over all citizens and thus secure their freedom and their privacy."

The Internet has radically transformed human society by democratizing access to information, as well as the aspiration to shape knowledge.

The general notion is for me valid enough but "democracy" is not always the same in all cultures. Nazi Germany became a fascist state when a democratic election put Hitler and his party in power. The Arab Spring, an example perhaps of this post, thus far indicates that in those states they would censor anti-Islam videos etc...not exactly a western sense of democracy.

In the US, we now have free access to the net but so much also in our elections seems controlled by the very wealthy . corporations, and lobbyistsposted by Postroad at 7:56 AM on September 26, 2012 [2 favorites]

"The aim," it calls, "is to distribute power as broadly as possible over all citizens and thus secure their freedom and their privacy."

That's what 2nd amendment advocates say about firearms and it makes as little sense there as here.posted by three blind mice at 8:33 AM on September 26, 2012 [6 favorites]

No, it makes sense. It's just not in the best interest of the powerful to let it happen. And most people just take the road of least resistance and let power accumulate at the top. That's exactly what Jefferson meant by refreshing the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants. You have to keep doing it. There's no one fix because any system can be gamed by the sufficiently motivated.posted by DU at 8:35 AM on September 26, 2012 [5 favorites]

Terrific energy is expended -- civilizations are built up -- excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top, and then it all slides back into misery and ruin. - C.S. Lewisposted by Egg Shen at 8:39 AM on September 26, 2012 [7 favorites]

I really wish I had even half the faith in people as Shirky and his fellows have. But, watching people in the US vote against their own best interests time and time again, I can't help but see Shirky et.al. as being really naïve and blindered by their unblinking faith in technology to transform all for the good. It's good to have dreamers among us, though.posted by Thorzdad at 8:39 AM on September 26, 2012 [3 favorites]

There is no such thing, ever, as too much information. You can't make people want or use that information, but that's a social problem, not a technological one. I think Shirky is on the right path here.posted by Benny Andajetz at 8:44 AM on September 26, 2012 [5 favorites]

Postroad: "The general notion is for me valid enough but "democracy" is not always the same in all cultures. Nazi Germany became a fascist state when a democratic election put Hitler and his party in power. The Arab Spring, an example perhaps of this post, thus far indicates that in those states they would censor anti-Islam videos etc...not exactly a western sense of democracy.

In the US, we now have free access to the net but so much also in our elections seems controlled by the very wealthy . corporations, and lobbyists"

Love the Shirky talk. He's not making bold claims about the future though, mainly just suggesting that open-source collaboration is a profoundly new way for humans to carry out complex group decision-making. How we use this tool politically is yet-to-be determined, but the fact that we have it is a very hopeful thing indeed. That's about all he's saying, and I think he's right.

Based on the surprisingly negative reactions in this somewhat related recent thread, I think too many people hear claims about the Internet and democracy and get knee-jerk reactions about specific current political issues. Or those with privelege get indignant at the thought of stupid laypeople getting involved and mucking up the process. I rather think that it's the long-term effects of whole generations growing up under the new transparency regime of the Internet that offers the most hope, not necessarily what us shmucks can do with it.

This is a great TED Talk, profound and inspiring, and I think it will eventually be very clear which side of history naysayers of direct democracy end up on. Nice post kliuless.

The Arab Spring, an example perhaps of this post, thus far indicates that in those states they would censor anti-Islam videos etc...not exactly a western sense of democracy.

First of all, England's own blasphemy laws were abolished in 2008, after being largely unused since the 1920s. There are still blasphemy laws on the books all over the west, and America regularly censors our own media. We place 47th in the world for press freedom according to Reporters Without Borders. A western sense of democracy is not much different; we just censor different expressions — mainly labor movements and human rights movements for the poor — because corporations are the dominant institution here rather than religious organizations.posted by deanklear at 9:04 AM on September 26, 2012 [15 favorites]

"The aim," it calls, "is to distribute power as broadly as possible over all citizens and thus secure their freedom and their privacy."

That's what 2nd amendment advocates say about firearms and it makes as little sense there as here.

There is a parallel. But do you really not see a significant difference between guns and information?posted by John Cohen at 9:04 AM on September 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

This post will not be relevant in the United States until at least half of the electorate knows what the phrase "instant runoff voting" means.posted by clarknova at 9:25 AM on September 26, 2012 [3 favorites]

rebent: iSurvivedRuffneck reminds us that, contrary to popular misconceptions, democracy actually prevented Hitler from rising to power

I didn't research it heavily, but did anyone else find that to be a pretty weak argument?

Egg Shen: Terrific energy is expended -- civilizations are built up -- excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top, and then it all slides back into misery and ruin. - C.S. Lewis

Also, everybody eventually dies, but people keep having babies and raising their children. Putting it more generally, the weird thing is that people expect that things, once created, should exist forever. It's easy to see why Lewis's Christian beliefs would encourage that delusion, but it's much more widespread than mere Christianity.posted by benito.strauss at 9:45 AM on September 26, 2012 [4 favorites]

the weird thing is that people expect that things, once created, should exist forever. It's easy to see why Lewis's Christian beliefs would encourage that delusion, but it's much more widespread than mere Christianity

Lewis's point was the opposite of the one I think you're making here.

He was saying that we should expect human enterprises to fall apart because we haven't put God at the center of our lives.

A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian. I may repeat "Do as you would be done by" till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbour as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey Him.posted by Egg Shen at 10:11 AM on September 26, 2012

There is no such thing, ever, as too much information. You can't make people want or use that information, but that's a social problem, not a technological one. I think Shirky is on the right path here.

I'd like to agree with you but every time I am in an American grocery store I slide into a barely conscious fugue state. I am overwhelmed and it stops my brain from working.

The internet does a lot of the same when I browse it as opposed to targeted searching..posted by srboisvert at 10:18 AM on September 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

I am temporarily abstaining from TED talks as I am burned out on them. Does Shirkey go full-out libertopia with bitcoin and assassination politics? If he does I will watch it.posted by bukvich at 10:19 AM on September 26, 2012

John Cohen: ""The aim," it calls, "is to distribute power as broadly as possible over all citizens and thus secure their freedom and their privacy."

That's what 2nd amendment advocates say about firearms and it makes as little sense there as here.

There is a parallel. But do you really not see a significant difference between guns and information?"

Yeah - "Happiness is a warm information" just doesn't have the same ring to it.posted by symbioid at 10:27 AM on September 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

To the powers that be, the internet of the 90s and early oughts must be a terrifying trend against their better interests.
I've long suspected that filesharing and its disruptive effects on industries is the blowback if not proximate cause of the the gov'ts efforts of late to track, video and file away as much of our individual behavior as possible.posted by Fupped Duck at 10:33 AM on September 26, 2012

Whenever I hear Shirky's name, I think of his breathless 'wow look power laws!' stuff from a decade ago, and the impressively, operatically negative reviews his work has drawn ("[Shirky's anecdotes] follow a practice attributed to The Economist, which is the Third Rule of Big Ideas: simplify and exaggerate").

I think too, perhaps unfairly, of 'Instapundit' Glenn Reynolds (remember him?) -- a techno-fetishist academic who would've died an anonymous Heinleinian libertarian dweeb had he not found an online lay audience for his pithy cuntistry, and owes his identity (in a literal sense!) to the 'Army of Davids' whose direct-democratic strength manifests in their decision to buy his tripe from Amazon instead of local bookstores.

And so I have not yet heard this talk OH WAIT IT'S A TED TALK I'M DOWNLOADING NOW

Lewis's point was the opposite of the one I think you're making here.
He was saying that we should expect human enterprises to fall apart because we haven't put God at the center of our lives.

That's pretty much what I thought he meant. Lewis believes that there is an ever-existing, perfect and unchanging God. And I think it's a pretty obvious implication of your second statement that once human enterprises are aligned with God they will no longer fall apart.

Me, I don't believe any such being exists. [Declaring myself to be an atheist on the Internet is probably the least daring intellectual act I've ever committed.] I also expect all things human to eventually fall apart.

I guess it's because I know about Lewis's work as an apologist that I automatically assumed there was a contrasting "Oh, but with God ...." at the end of that statement. My response was "The only reason you find this remarkable is because of your belief in your god. To me, it is how the world works".posted by benito.strauss at 10:50 AM on September 26, 2012

"The aim," it calls, "is to distribute power as broadly as possible over all citizens and thus secure their freedom and their privacy."

Which misses a big point. The point of modern representational democracy is not to protect the 51% who collectively win every time, it's to protect the 49% who *lose* every vote. (Yes, this is a variant of "the important thing for a legislature to do is say no to bad ideas, not yes to good ones.)

The majority protects what rights it thinks are important to it. Distributing power doesn't change that -- indeed, it makes it vastly more important, and more difficult, to protect the rights of the minority.posted by eriko at 11:02 AM on September 26, 2012 [4 favorites]

more difficult, to protect the rights of the minority.

My reading of the democratic failure is not that the minority needs protection from the majority...it's that the population of citizens needs to wrest control of delegates from captive non-citizen interests.posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 11:24 AM on September 26, 2012

The point of modern representational democracy is not to protect the 51% who collectively win every time, it's to protect the 49% who *lose* every vote.

Here's where I mention my crazy meta-voting system. Every vote, you are allocated X vote-tokens. The alternative with the most vote-tokens wins. If the alternative you voted for wins, you lose your vote-tokens. If the alternative you voted for loses, you only lose Y% of your tokens; the rest are used in the next vote. If X = 1 and Y = 0, you get an interesting system where a minority that is Z% of the population gets their way Z% of the time. But to avoid super-crazy (like neo-nazi) minorities getting power, you can increase Y. This creates a threshold population percentage that a minority must exceed before it can win a vote all on its own.posted by Jpfed at 11:30 AM on September 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

The Arab Spring, an example perhaps of this post, thus far indicates that in those states they would censor anti-Islam videos etc

To be clear, all that's been shown is that a very loud, vocal minority in some Islamic states would censor anti-Islam videos. If we judged ourselves by the same standards we judge those nations, our own country is one that would cheerfully censor "On the Origin of Species" and whose streets are teeming with bloodthirsty mobs cheering on the public execution of abortion clinic workers. We view the shortcomings of those outside our own particular identity groups to be much more severe and intractable than our own, and yet, I can still show you footage from only a few decades ago of entire town populations in the south mobbing the streets to jeer at black children as young as five and six for having the gall to want to go to the same public school as the white kids.posted by saulgoodman at 11:44 AM on September 26, 2012 [5 favorites]

The majority protects what rights it thinks are important to it. Distributing power doesn't change that -- indeed, it makes it vastly more important, and more difficult, to protect the rights of the minority.

Too bad we couldn't create some fundamental document setting out certain basic, universal rights extended to everyone regardless of whatever immediate, short-term shifts in popular opinion or political winds occur, and then use Democratic processes to sort out how to manage all the essential day-to-day business that doesn't require abridging any of those basic rights.posted by saulgoodman at 11:52 AM on September 26, 2012 [5 favorites]

But seriously, this is a fascinating subject. Part of me really wants to believe the internet could make democracy more participatory and vital; another part thinks we would just let our worst mob instincts prevail too much of the time.posted by saulgoodman at 11:55 AM on September 26, 2012

We are told in a comment that Democracy prevented Hitler from getting power--odd. How then did he become Chancellor"HERE IS HOW
Hamas, too got into power via "free elections" in Gaza...not exactly my view of democracy.posted by Postroad at 12:04 PM on September 26, 2012

"The ancient dream of compiling all human knowledge and culture and to store it for the present and future is within close grasp," the Pirate manifesto posits.

Yeah? Well then they have either a stunted notion of what "knowledge" and "culture" mean or a stunted notion of what "all" means.

> until at least half of the electorate knows what the phrase "instant runoff voting" means.

You know what to do, 4chan.posted by jfuller at 12:17 PM on September 26, 2012

saulgoodman: Too bad we couldn't create some fundamental document setting out certain basic, universal rights extended to everyone regardless of whatever immediate, short-term shifts in popular opinion or political winds occur, and then use Democratic processes to sort out how to manage all the essential day-to-day business that doesn't require abridging any of those basic rights.

This sounds like a good idea. We might begin with a statement of thesis. No, that doesn't sound right. How about a manifesto that would spell out...nah. Well, we need to write up some sort of declaration (describing those rights which we believe ought to be inalienable), then select a body of authors to create a series of bills that represent a compendium of thought along those lines.

This needs a little work. I'll get back to you about this after football season.

Anyhow, I was crushed by the video presentation. All this time I was thinking the internet might be our salvation. Turns out it's just another tool. Still....the inclusion of the "Arab Spring" into the discussion seems to validate the premise that the tool is only as good as the job to which it's employed. Democracy wears more than one hat.

The tools that were used to create the internet, or that evolved as an adjunct to it, may lead to a better world. But that depends on the collective will of the hands that employ them. Let's hope it doesn't take 150 years to get from porn to scientific methodology. It should be obvious that mere numbers are not the issue. I'm sensing an Orwellian undercurrent, where these electronic innovations are subverted by the oligarchs, who give us the illusion of control by letting us choose from among things they provide, which divert our attention from anything that might be harmful to the system.

Okay, Gibsonian, not Orewellian. I'm trying to imagine the benefits of being governed by the response net of You Tube watchers.posted by mule98J at 12:20 PM on September 26, 2012

We place 47th in the world for press freedom according to Reporters Without Borders. A western sense of democracy is not much different

There are problems with the American media, but let's be fair, the equivalent rankings for countries with major incidents in the Arab Spring are:

These are out of a total of 179. I don't mean to defend everything that happens in the Western world by any stretch, but there is a substantial qualitative difference between how free expression is valued in Western democracies versus global standards.posted by dsfan at 12:44 PM on September 26, 2012

Why is open source is considered synonymous with democracy? Most OS projects aren't run as democracies, in fact it's the opposite, the so-called "benevolent dictator" model is very popular. So does open source politics means that anyone can submit ideas for legislation to a single person or tiny group that holds power, and if the suggestion aligns with their interests, then it gets passed into law? Because that is often how it works. It's like a workplace suggestion box, but even worse because you can't just write down the idea, you actually have to build it before you suggest it.

Clay Shirky's talk is practically free of any content at all. The key to a more democratic society lies in how we manage documents? In principle, open source legislation means anyone can submit a change, but that says nothing about what actually ends up in the bill. Let's say you have your tax legislation under version control, and have one change that says "Tax cuts for the wealthy!" and another that says "Tax increases for the wealthy to pay for social spending!" What then, Clay Shirky? How does the fact that the proposed legislation is under version control help us decide between the two options?

Maybe we'd have a broader range of policy options to choose from, but so what? We'd still have to decide somehow. The only way that I can see you could be optimistic about this scenario is if you believed that some lay-person has a brilliant idea that would satisfy every political position and we wouldn't have to decide between competing ideas at all. Basically a belief, against all evidence, that competing visions of society are really just one big misunderstanding.posted by AlsoMike at 12:47 PM on September 26, 2012 [4 favorites]

The Internet has already been impacting the governing bodies in many ways...We have already seen what happened across Egypt and other Arabian countries, we have already seen how one can propagate the revolutionary messages across the world and in days and weeks time a government changes.

There are many people who say Internet is going to doom the world..I have heard many calling it to be more deadly than Atom Bombs.....While people have their reservation about it, I personally feel it will eventually change the world for Good.

I live in a democratic country India which is currently massively hit by corruption and human right violations. It is the Internet that keeps my faith in democracy alive; it is the Internet that never lets me feel alone. There were many ministers who openly spoke of posing a limited sanction on it..But soon they changed their stands...They realized that Indian youth can initiate a large scale change by using social networks.

The coming governments will have to acknowledge its significance and use it in every possible way to the betterment of people.posted by molisk at 12:47 PM on September 26, 2012

Why is open source is considered synonymous with democracy?

I think the two are associated in people's minds via the concept of transparency, present in both open source and (effective) democracy.posted by Jpfed at 1:03 PM on September 26, 2012 [2 favorites]

Terrific energy is expended -- civilizations are built up -- excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top, and then it all slides back into misery and ruin. - C.S. Lewis

Knowledge is power. A society with a more equal distribution of power, where the ability of one individual to coerce another is diminished, is a more democratic society. With respect to censorship vis a vis the Arab spring, the Arab spring enabled individuals to speak out against repressive minorities. With respect to the tyranny of the majority, and in a true democracy the rights of an individual to be free from coercion shouldn't just apply to those in the majority.posted by Gregamell at 2:09 PM on September 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

Also, with respect the superiority of western democracies:

"We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic."

I saw the talk and thought it was interesting, in a "starting point for discussion" way.

The idea of Wiki-legislation is very limited, because (as I've said before on the blue) democratic decision-making is not just voting, it's an entire process of discussion and drafting that leads to the final vote.

However, the idea that we need to work on collaborative ways to manage comment and public contributions to decisions, rather than a hierarchical way, is fair enough. The UK Government, as it happens, are starting to work on new approaches to open government and open policy. [Self-link alert: second link is one of my projects but not one of my posts]

I don't know enough about Git to work out how realistic Shirky's description is, but I can see that something like open source communities could be one root of a useful conversation on collaborative participation methods.posted by athenian at 3:08 PM on September 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

This just in: "Pirate Party" renamed "Crazy Eddie Party" by general Reddit vote.posted by LordSludge at 3:25 PM on September 26, 2012

The idea of Wiki-legislation

Be aware that distributed revision control is crucially unlike the wiki model. In a Wiki, anybody can introduce a change to the single version that everyone sees, and it takes a shitfight remove it again. Anybody can remove content from the single version that everyone sees, and it takes a shitfight to get it back in. The result for the users is unstable integrity -- even a single article which is reasonably good on average may be terrible at any given moment.

In the DRC model, anyone can clone the whole, make changes to their separate, private copy and publish it in a way that makes it simple to compare and integrate those changes back into the source. But the owners of that source are under no obligation to accept or even take the slightest notice of the changed clone. Only if those changes are agreeable to the owners do they have to take them back.

What makes the latter democratic is that no user is obliged to continue using the original source -- if they believe the clone has more merit, they can try to persuade the owners to take the changes, or they can transfer their fealty to the new version. Both things happen on a regular basis. Forks can and do become the new standard.

But how this can apply to governance is much more difficult -- the first part, that anyone can offer an altered version for comparison, is easy. The second part, of transferring your loyalty to a variant you like better is a little tougher. For better or worse, individual citizens cannot severally decide to be governed by a forked constitution or system of laws. That's not to say it's conceptually possible -- Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age or even Iain Banks' Culture novels offer fictional depictions of it. Interestingly, they're made possible for almost diametrically opposite conditions: in the former novel the system arose out of the chaos of a global collapse of governance; in the latter it's enabled by a benign dictatorship of superintelligent AIs.posted by George_Spiggott at 4:30 PM on September 26, 2012 [5 favorites]

I think it's great that Shirky gave this TED talk. He's joining a growing chorus discussing the tools and processes related to open source programming (and open data) and mapping them to governance, but I'm afraid people are more attracted to how it can enable direct democracy, and that clouds the real possibilities here.

Programming is not just a set of tools or processes related to making software. Shirky gets it when he connects to how many open source projects use tools that enable collaboration in ways that would seem messy and non-hierarchical, and then produce systems that are useful, and powerful, at a speed and scale that was unthinkable a short time ago.

George_Spiggot and AlsoMike (along with others here) have done a good job of explaining that all is not as it would seem however. If Shirky would have digged a little deeper he'd have seen that Linus is indeed called Linux's benevolent dictator for a reason. And that works for Linux. But it certainly wouldn't be a pathway to direct democracy, if that is the goal (which I don't think should be).

I happen to be a fan of representative democracy, and there is plenty of precedent showing that it works if given the proper care and work to keep it functioning - which it is not (a rant for another day).

Going to Shirky's Tax Code example, it has now grown to over 15k pages. More than any one person can understand and absorb. It is obfuscated. And those who have the knowledge to navigate that code, or have the means to purchase that knowledge, have an advantage over those that don't.

That's not fair to the small business person, not fair to the poor, not fair for any woman or man working today and it creates a non-level playing field. Beyond the fairness (which relates to all of us being equal under rule of law), its complexity makes government inefficient and non-transparent.

Software engineering methodologies, and ways of thinking about complexity have an application here. Especially those related to the idea of 'technical debt'.

Most software in use resembles in some respects living systems, requiring care, and maintenance to continue to work. Beyond maintenance, the environment and knowledge surrounding a problem domain evolves over time, and that requires software to actively evolve. When it does not, or does in a matter that resembles urban sprawl, you get what resembles a "Big Ball of Mud". Read that last link and relate it to what we see in Federal government.

What if we applied some of the techniques we use to refactor software, and pare down technical debt, to the Tax Code? What if we applied those same techniques to the corpus of regulatory law? Lets get all of it on github. Create tools that enable each of us to look for complexity and code that should be deleted due to non-relevance, or rewritten due to changing requirements, and comment, and even act by proposing our own patches to our shared 'software'. The challenge then would be to do this in such a way that opens up the maximum amount of participation.

The goal shouldn't be smaller government, but smarter government, better able to deal with the leaps that commerce and other entities have made in leveraging data and connectivity, so that government can be effective. Indeed, the goal should be shared participation by all of us, beyond the vote.posted by kmartino at 5:07 AM on September 27, 2012

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